UPDATE TERBARU

Epilogue: Continued

Wait, there's no way it can end like that!"

Close one, it almost ended. The curtain almost came down.

Even though it can't be! Even though there's no way it can end like this!

It's not like I lied. All my feelings just now were true.

But, there is no daily life to return to anymore. Daily life without Kaguya is no longer daily life.

"Like hell I can end it like this!"

"Whoa!"

When I slammed open the staff room door with a dobaan, Mr. Tachibana jumped up from his chair with a dobaan. I charged straight to his desk and snatched back the career preference survey I had just submitted.

"Sorry! I'll worry about it a bit more."

"……Take your time."

Sent off by the slightly recoiling teacher, I left the staff room. I ran straight back to the mansion. There was no particular need to run, no particular reason to hurry, but I ran anyway. I ran as if leaving behind my past self, my hesitation, my bewilderment, my fear, my reluctance, and various other things.

"I don't need a happy ending. A normal ending is fine."

No way.

"This is my ending! Running toward destiny suuuuper happily."

No way.

"I will move forward, holding the memories with Kaguya in my heart."

"NO WAY!"

I jumped into the streaming room and dragged out the keyboard I had just put away. Bringing in my PC, headphones, energy drinks, and various other things,

"Let's do this!"

I closed the door with the momentum of never returning to the human world again.

"Ah, before that."

I won't repeat the same mistake. Contact Roka and Mami, and then BAMBOOcafe. To my best friends, I sent a mail saying I'll be absent from school for a few more days but I'm fine so don't worry, and to my workplace, I sent a mail saying I caught an epidemic and can't move so I can't come to work for a while—mails with completely opposite contents.

Replies arrived immediately.

"Mami: Roge—. What about tomorrow's dinner?"

"Roka: Postponing is fine, let's do it after the Princess feels better. In exchange, make sure to eat properly!"

"Mio-chan: Sakayori-senpai, I heard from the manager. Please rest without worrying. I will fill all the holes for the times you covered for me!"

Thank you, Mami. Roka. Mio-chan.

"Everyone, thank you!"

I stated my gratitude clearly out loud and bowed my head to the smartphone. Then, I faced the keyboard again. Through the keyboard, I faced myself and Kaguya.

Hey, Kaguya. I have something I want to tell you. Something I absolutely have to convey. You said it, didn't you, on the day of the fireworks.

"I wanted to sing with Iroha, much much more."

"Me too, more……"

I wanted to sing more. I wanted to talk more. Play more, go out more, see more scenery, laugh together more.

"I wanted to be with Kaguya more!"

I'll turn that feeling into a song. Where are you now? Are you on the moon? Are you in space? Wherever is fine, I'll deliver it to you. A song packed with all my feelings. Lend me your strength, Dad.

I placed my fingers on the keyboard. As if waiting for that timing, my mobile phone vibrates.

It's a call. Strangely, I guessed who the caller was. Displayed on the screen was,

"Mom Incoming Call"

Without hesitation, I picked up the phone.

"Hello──"

"Ah, finally answered. You spineless girl."

Without waiting for my first word, a cool voice out of place pierced my ear.

"How many times did I call? Scared to talk because you're spoiled? I hear you're resting from school without contacting them. What a grand status. Do you intend to live alone? Don't you understand yet how many people are inconvenienced when you delay one thing? Unless you correct that self-centeredness, no one will evaluate you. They'll just smirk seeing you sink on your own."

She doesn't stop, she doesn't stop. Amazing, as usual. Even if I move the smartphone away from my ear, the lecture can be heard clearly. It feels like my battery is draining rapidly. Like this, not letting me answer anything, cornering me in rapid succession, intently listing up my flaws; this is Mom's way. Big Brother told me to parry it, but it's impossible for me. I have my own way too.

"……I'm sorry."

But, just for this time, no matter how I think about it, I'm in the wrong, so I have to start with an apology. But──.

"Don't apologize without a rebuttal. I'm not a soft person who will be silenced by an apology. Or do you want to be a sandbag?"

Mom won't be swayed by a single apology like that. I already know that.

"Listen, Mom."

"……Fine. ……Speak carefully. Depending on the content you speak from now, I intend to make an irreversible decision."

"……Okay."

"Speak."

After a short silence, I took a deep breath. I know a long-winded preamble is useless.

"……I can't become Mom's ideal."

"……"

"I've been working hard all this time. To become able to talk to Mom as an equal. To become a family with Mom again. But you know, I realized. Mom and I are different humans. Wanting to have the same feelings was impossible from the start. But…… that's fine."

"……"

"Mom, I want to find what I want to do. Not to be praised by someone, not to be acknowledged, I want to find what I really want to do. I want to use my life for that."

"Is that so."

"Even so, I don't intend to say 'cheer for me'. But at least, please give me…… the time until I find it."

Gripping the smartphone, I bowed my head. Even though I knew she couldn't see it, I bowed deeply. Mom fell silent for a long time, and then,

"Naive. You've always been──"

Of course, she hadn't wavered a single millimeter.

From there, it just became an argument. At the end of an argument across a straight-line distance of two hundred kilometers sandwiching the smartphone,

"Fine."

Mom suddenly said that.

"Try it. However, doing what you like comes with responsibility. You won't know if you were suited for it until the end, and in the worst case, you'll die alone where no one is around. You must not forget that."

Leaving only that, the call was cut unilaterally. Threatening and scaring, she can only convey worry in such a way. Mom is.

I lay down on the sofa as if collapsing.

"……I said it."

I said it, to Mom.

Strangely, no deep emotion welled up. Even though if it were the me up until now, I would have been happy enough to dance in the heavens if Mom acknowledged me.

"I see……"

The number one thing inside me had changed long ago.

A little lonely, and a little happy. What is this emotion?

I tried listening closely to the voice inside my head, but I couldn't hear Mom's voice anymore.

After that, the moon rose several times.

Injecting all time and energy other than sleep and meals into the keyboard,

"……Done."

It was born.

Suffering and suffering, yet in the end, smoothly as if guided by moonlight.

"Dad, thank you."

……I was able to enjoy it properly.

Hugging the freshly made, still pulsating song, I stood up.

Opening the window, I stepped onto the balcony illuminated by moonlight with bare feet. It was a windless night. Looking up, the moon with its left half hidden in darkness is looking down at me.

Kaguya, you're watching from there, right. Will you listen? I might not be able to sing very well though. I made it into a song with all my might, my everything.

The silver bracelet I received from Kaguya; wrapping Kaguya's fragment sparkling in the moonlight with both hands, I inhaled the night air.

"──Continuation of yesterday──wanted to talk──even if trivial──it was just right──let me hear your true feelings──because I just want to try making it come true──"

I continued singing, repeating over and over.

Thinking of Kaguya. Thinking of the days with Kaguya.

Before I knew it, the singing voice was no longer singular.

We were singing together. As usual, you learn songs quickly, Kaguya.

I was singing together with Kaguya. It's not a hallucination. I can hear it certainly. It's Kaguya's voice.

"Then Kaguya, one more time!"

Laughing. Running. Let's sing, as many times as we want.

I started singing again. This time, the two of us. Two…… huh?

"What is this voice……?"

A third voice that shouldn't be audible could be heard.

What is this. A third voice entering the world of just me and Kaguya. I don't think 'Whose voice is it'. Because there is no way I would mistake this voice. But, why is her voice here.

"──Ah."

At that moment, a star flowed in the night sky. As if invited, a meteor runs through my head too. Many, many of them. They become countless flashes, illuminating every corner inside my head.

I thought it was strange. From the beginning, all along.

Why was I, who should have abandoned music, attracted to her song?

Why did her song soak so deeply into my heart?

Why was she singing the same melody as the song I made?

And why did she always smile quietly, as if she knew the fate ahead?

All the “whys” converged into one,

"Yachiyo……"

I was calling the name of my goddess.

※

"Yachiyo has been practicing loach scooping lately. It's a super interesting dance so I'll introduce it—. Here goes. Ah, sore ♪ Ah, yoisho ♪"

It was the first time I dove into Tsukuyomi since Kaguya's graduation live.

Yachiyo's stream was projected on the street monitors as usual, and several avatars stopped and were watching. There are some people laughing, but that is a rerun. I, who chase everything about Yachiyo, know immediately. This is the first time something like this has happened.

As I thought, something happened to Yachiyo. Even if I want to confirm, neither phone nor mail connects. Although I came to Tsukuyomi clinging to a ray of hope, as expected, meeting Yachiyo is……

"──Nn?"

What was that just now. Something moved at the edge of my vision. It runs away as if it noticed me. I chased instinctively.

"Wait! Why are you alone"

How was it able to move so fast? It scurried around the alleys chokomaka, and finally stopped upon reaching a dead end.

"Tell me where she is."

I asked FUSHI, who finally stopped.

FUSHI, who should always be by Yachiyo's side, FUSHI, who should be one in body and soul with Yachiyo,

"……"

Looked back at me silently. Staring back at me intently while keeping its mouth shut. It doesn't seem to intend to reply. Then, that's enough.

"I'll search by myself."

As I spat that out and turned my heel,

"Idiot."

FUSHI finally spoke.

"Search where?"

"If you won't tell me, the whole world."

When I answered, FUSHI stared at me with small eyes, and,

"……Try opening your eyes."

Eyes? For a moment I didn't understand what it meant, but when I opened my eyelids,

"Over here."

Why?

FUSHI is inside the room. FUSHI is in my room in the real world, and starts running as if to guide me. I immediately noticed that the AR function of the Smart Con was ON. There's no time to think; I chased after it in my loungewear and jumped outside.

FUSHI ran through the city smoothly as if knowing the real world inside out. Turning corners, going down slopes, even using the train, it guided me to a room in a certain apartment building.

The key is unlocked. When I opened the door slowly,

"……What is this place?"

I was greeted by damp, stifling heat.

Was it a server room? It was a space where a large amount of PCs, storage devices, and network equipment were packed in a cluttered manner. It was a messy way of being cluttered, but also a way of scattering that felt deja vu somewhere. In the center of the room was,

"Water tank……?"

A water tank where air was bubbling bokoboko and filled with a mysterious liquid; submerged there was…… a bamboo shoot. I thought for a few seconds, but it only looks like a bamboo shoot. What is that. The more I look the more it's a bamboo shoot, but the more I look the more I can't take my eyes off it. A sensation I know but am seeing for the first time, this is──that's right. The sensation of seeing a Moon Person for the first time.

"This is Yachiyo."

"……Eh?"

"Enter Tsukuyomi from here."

Closing my eyelids as told by FUSHI, I dive into Tsukuyomi. It took a little time. A feeling different from usual, a sensation like sneaking in secretly from the back door──.

"……"

It was a room I was seeing for the first time.

Countless lanterns were glowing dully, and from the faint sound of wind, I can tell it is on a considerably high floor.

A room that seems special and comfortable, but a little lonely.

It must be someone's private room. Probably, of someone sitting with their back to me right in front of my eyes now.

"……Kaguya."

The back figure with long hair spread on the floor looked like Kaguya.

It resembled Kaguya. But, the one who turned around was,

"Yachiyo."

──It was.

I threw the ridiculous deduction that descended like a revelation inside me at the diva of Tsukuyomi.

"Is Yachiyo, Kaguya?"

"……"

"I know I'm saying something weird. But……"

Yachiyo rounded her eyes in surprise, then smiled thinly.

Then she stands up slowly.

"Long long ago──"

And, she began to tell a story. In Yachiyo's usual way of speaking.

"A song arrived to the important Princess Kaguya, who returned to the moon and was working hard as a corporate slave. It was a song made just for Princess Kaguya, for Princess Kaguya alone."

My song.

"Princess Kaguya was overjoyed. Saying 'Let's go to Earth one more tiiime~~', she finished her work at explosive speed and completed the handover too. However, in Earth time, she was extremely late. But, don't worry. The moon's super technology can even transcend time. Princess Kaguya heading to Earth transcending time. But, just a little more to go, she hit a huuuuge stone."

…….

"Man~, as expected when it comes to time travel, even with super technology the control was super difficult~. ……The ship took critical damage and was on the verge of being shipwrecked. What she finally arrived at while being totally exhausted was Earth roughly eight thousand years ago."

…….

"With the meager power of the broken ship, only the dog DOGE who accompanied her gained a body. It was able to become a sea slug that happened to be swimming nearby. Kaguya could only interact with the world through the sea slug."

──I was standing still, without really understanding what I was being told.

"Time passed, people gave form to invisible things, and obtained the power to connect with many people. That resembled the world of the moon a little, and Kaguya learned for the first time the possibility that her soul-only self could interact with the world. And so, she was able to meet Iroha again as the diva of the virtual world Tsukuyomi."

……With me? That means──

"Yeah, with Iroha."

Saying that, Yachiyo slapped her forehead as if to say 'big failure', and,

"Ouch, with this, it doesn't become a 'happily ever after' without a care, I guess~~, as expected ♪"

She laughed jokingly.

With Yachiyo's usual way of laughing.

"...And what about the Kaguya who was with me?"

When I asked, Yachiyo's smile faded just a little, and,

"Even now, she is repeating the same cycle of reincarnation."

She said sadly, looking up at Tsukuyomi's moon.

"We cannot leave that circle."

Or perhaps, that was a self-deprecating expression.

"……I don't understand at all."

I couldn't understand it at all. No, I didn't want to. What is Yachiyo saying? The same reincarnation? That's, that's ridiculous……

That means, the Kaguya I know, my Kaguya is……

"I don't understand at all."

Does that mean she's been sent to Earth eight thousand years ago right about now?

All alone? Lured by my song, just to meet me──.

"It's just a fairy tale, don't think too deeply about it~~. Anyway, let's celebrate our reunion for now ☆"

Laughing jokingly, Yachiyo took my hand. I felt as if I was told not to think about it any further.

I was led out to the balcony just like that. The room seemed to be quite high up, and I could see the night view of Tsukuyomi from the balcony.

"Yachiyo really loves the view from here."

Yachiyo says, spreading her arms as if to embrace the night view. The wind of Tsukuyomi made her long hair dance as if playing with it. being good friends with the wind is the same as Kaguya.

She's beautiful; I find myself captivated by her profile.

"Why……?"

"Hmm?"

"Why is Yachiyo always smiling?"

Yachiyo, who cackles while telling such a grandiose, absurd story as if it were an old tale. But to me, for some reason, Yachiyo looked as if she was crying.

"Because that's Yachiyo."

It was a speed that made me think she had prepared the answer. I thought it was an escape from something, and likely the truth.

Yachiyo looked down lovingly at Tsukuyomi's night view again, and,

"But you know……"

Her fingers gripping the handrail trembled.

"Even though I promised to take you to a Happy End."

The trembling of her fingers spread to her arms,

"Even though I came back after hearing Iroha's song."

Spread to her shoulders,

"Sorry, I messed up."

Finally, her voice trembled.

"The sparkling Princess Kaguya is already an old lady."

Even so, Yachiyo was smiling.

Without shedding a single tear, she was crying while smiling.

"……Kaguya."

Kaguya didn't make a face like that.

After a long silence, Yachiyo opened her mouth fearfully.

"Iroha, if you didn't want to know, you can forget it. FUSHI can do things like that──"

"Yachiyo!"

A voice louder than I expected spilled out. I didn't know the reason myself. But I was incredibly──sad, lonely, and angry.

Yachiyo is looking at me with wide eyes. I turned on my heel and stomped back into the room dosu dosu. Sitting down on the wooden floor with momentum enough to break it,

"Tell me."

"Eh?"

"Tell me everything that happened in eight thousand years."

"Ehh?"

"I won't sleep!"

"……You say unreasonable things."

Yachiyo laughed, looking just a little younger.

When Yachiyo moved her hand as if brushing something away, the room we were in changed into the IR apartment I lived in. Snacks and cola were placed on the desk, just like when Kaguya and I were living together.

But I'm not surprised anymore. Since I'm the one who stepped in here first.

"Alright then, first is the story about catching fish with the Jomon people. The one I remember well is, was it Nagatsuno? A shrimp with super long feelers was seriously precious. It was bright red even without boiling, I wanted to make sushi with that. Also, the Otsukinamazu! A huge catfish that can only be caught on moonlit nights! When grilled with firewood, fat comes out like wringing a wet towel. And then and then──"

She talked and talked. She kept talking non-stop for about two full days, and,

"Go to sleep already, Iroha. You'll die."

I'm naturally at my limit too, but I answer stoutly, "Not yet."

"SLEEP! SLEEP!"

"Oops~, it's Yachiyo's time to sleep. Well then, goodnight~~"

Cut off by FUSHI's alarm, she collapsed and slept as if a thread had been cut buttsuri.

I creep up fearfully to Yachiyo lying on the wooden floor. She's not breathing in her sleep, but her eyelids are certainly closed. Probably, she is sleeping.

"Yachiyo's activity limit is fifty-two hours. She needs to periodically enter sleep mode for charging, updates, and memory organization."

FUSHI jumped onto Yachiyo's body and said.

"……So Yachiyo was this chatty. Since I was always just having her listen, I didn't know anything."

"Laughing kerakera the whole time."

Shaking my heavy head, I sat next to the sleeping Yachiyo. Even while sleeping, Yachiyo's face is still smiling. I gently stroked her hair. As if cherishing, as if caring for her.

"……It shouldn't be just funny stories."

You learned to force a smile over eight thousand years, didn't you.

You became like me.

"Hey, FUSHI?"

"……"

"There are things Yachiyo is hiding, right?"

"……"

The thoughtful sea slug didn't answer anything immediately. After a long, long silence,

"……If Yachiyo didn't say it, then that is……"

"Show me. I have to see all of Kaguya."

"I don't know if a human body can withstand it."

"No questions asked."

From there, FUSHI falls silent again. However, this silence didn't look like it was hesitating over the answer.

"Yachiyo…… looked truly happy just now for the first time in a while."

"Yeah."

"Here we go!"

The sea slug's eyes glowed red. As I was exposed to a gaze like a laser beam, the room crumbled apart like building blocks barabara.

And, my body began to fall──

"Yachiyo, you're somewhere, right? Come out…… help me……"

"Kaguya!"

In the blink of an eye, I assimilated with Kaguya's consciousness and flew to Earth eight thousand years ago.

※

……Where is this?

When I came to, I was on an empty sandy beach.

……Why am I in a place like this?

If I recall, I should have heard a song.

I heard Iroha's song, remembered everything about Earth, made a copy of myself, and then cooperated with the Princess to make a ship too, and departed while singing.

……That's right, we hit a meteorite, the devices malfunctioned…… geez, who developed this peaky time travel algorithm! Ah, I was in charge~, even though the calculations were perfect, what a pity, armchair theory, does this mean I'm in the abyss of hell~!

……Iroha.

……Looks like I failed.

……Iroha!

Trying to shout, I realized no voice came out.

……Iroha!

Trying to run, I realized I couldn't move.

……Irohaa!

Seeing my reflection on the water surface, I realized I had no body.

Ah, this is bad. I couldn't "mimic" automatically.

Moon People are thought entities without physical bodies. Therefore, the moon-made ship "Original Shining Bamboo" grants the crew a physical body optimized by investigating the environment of the planet landed on. Does that mean if I don't find a vessel, I become like a ghost? Uoooh, empty~.

Are the functions dead?

……"Original Shining Bamboo", respond.

No way~.

……"Original Shining Bamboo", respond.

We simulated all kinds of possibilities, does this mean Kaguya-chan was powerless?

……"Original Shining Bamboo", respond!

Seriously. Without a voice, without a form, unable to leave here, and not disappearing thanks to the strongest outer shell I programmed myself?

……Iroha.

I couldn't even hold my head.

As I understood the situation, my thoughts gradually became clear. Organizing what happened to me one by one, carefully checking against the current situation,

……Ah, I messed up.

Slowly taking time, I fell into despair.

How many years and months have passed since then.

Morning comes, night comes, glaring sunshine beats down, snow falls. How many times has that repeated? I, who feel neither heat nor cold, just sat at the water's edge. Hugging knees that didn't exist.

In a time that seemed like eternity, I was singing the whole time. In my head. Just one song.

……Let's make this moment, the best, party.

And, at the thousandth-something refrain,

"──"

My hearing caught something.

What is this. Very unreliable, fleeting, and nostalgic.

"──"

This is a voice. A human voice.

Looking up, a boy was standing on the sandy beach. A small child. He is straining his ears. Can you hear my voice?

"──"

The boy looked back behind him. Was he called by someone? No, don't go. Stay here, listen to my story. Please.

How did such thoughts connect? My consciousness entered the body of the sea slug, the dog DOGE, and,

"Wait!"

The boy looks back at me. That face, which seemed to have a strong will, reminded me of someone. It seems language doesn't get through. As I thought, this place is different from the world I was with Iroha. I've come to the far future, or perhaps the past.

For a Moon Person thought entity, decoding and reproducing local languages is not that difficult. However, with this body, I cannot enunciate sufficiently, and communication is difficult. With body language, which I was good at when I was with Iroha, I quickly became friends with the boy and played together. Every day, every day, until the boy suddenly stopped coming.

I wonder what happened. Dragging the sea slug body to go see him, the boy was lying down alone. He looked pale. He was sweating cold sweat. It was the same as when Iroha collapsed. He looked terribly painful. Yet, why is there no one to nurse him? Where is the doctor? Medicine?

"──"

The boy leaked words like delirium. Sing, that's what I heard.

I don't know if the sound coming from a sea slug's body can be called a song, but when I sang with all my might, he looked like he smiled just a little. So, I kept singing. Until the boy felt no pain, until he stopped moving. Even when no one was left.

I became alone again. If this place is Earth far in the past compared to Iroha's world, will I be able to meet Iroha again much later? From the current situation where I don't know left from right, it didn't seem like a very probable prediction.

Yachiyo, you're somewhere, right…… being eight thousand years old was a lie? Help me.

Of course, there is no response.

Time passed faster than I imagined.

Peddlers constantly beaten down on price in the city, writers writing stories with ink-stained fingers, poets solely composing poems of love, officials thinking only of taxes and war, generals changing banners with every battle, even the powerful families controlling the capital──everyone equally, in at most fifty years or so, dies as if fading out from the screen futto.

Wars were truly frequent too. If you color-coded human history on a calendar, most squares would be filled with fire, screams, and the red of blood.

Burning castles, skirmishes by the sea, looting of nameless villages; from a distance, they are only the same red dots, but every time, someone's child, someone's lover, someone's "future" disappears, and I just watched it intently.

It was too contrasting with life on the moon.

In an equation solved in advance, no one ages, no one fights seriously, no one dies.

A sensation like staring endlessly at a perfectly designed huge water tank where no water or waves rise. That's why it took me a terrible amount of time to accept the one-time-only "end".

Without being able to feel the changing seasons on my skin, shed tears, or change everyone's fate.

Just swaying in the tide with this small soft body, I continued to see off humans being born and dying for thousands of years.

There were many people I came to like. A poet who fell in love with me, a girl who kept selling flowers in a city turned to ruins by air raids, a courtesan who aimed to be a high-ranking courtesan (Oiran) with me in a three-legged race. Because I inevitably ended up loving the resolve of people living risking their lives.

Every time I remember the people I couldn't save, scratches form inside me and won't disappear.

If only I had conveyed it well. If only I could guide them somehow.

Ah, back then, even if something bad happened, I could forget it immediately.

The strongest Kaguya who could do anything is gone now.

……Iroha, being unable to run away from one's weak self is the most terrifying thing, isn't it. The meaning of the color deep in your eyes, I feel like I understand it now.

Along with war, people rapidly developed science and technology. Telephone, refrigerator, radio, cathode-ray tube. And finally, they created the World Wide Web.

With the sea slug body, I haltingly input "Hello, world!" into the chat box and try sending it. Immediately, "Hello, you." comes back. It was a shock.

Because even that virtual world I spent with Iroha was beginning to become hazy and dim for me.

……Even that genius Kaguya-chan can only make something of this level without the moon's infrastructure, huh.

Well, whatever. Twisting the sea slug body to type the program. Write html. Do access analysis too.

If technology advances further and I can connect the "Original Shining Bamboo" directly to the net, I might be able to transcend the constraints of this body and talk to everyone, to many people.

I felt with a strange feeling that my thinning memories were beginning to be reconstructed with a definite form.

That's right, someday I want to make a big plaza in the virtual world, a place where everyone does what they like, without killing each other, no one becomes lonely, and can always get a reply.

That's right, the name is──I realized with a start.

……I was an idiot. Why didn't I notice until now. ──I am going to become Yachiyo. This world has surely been repeating this many times.

At the same time, I became convinced that I could definitely reunite with Iroha. In just a few more decades. The sea slug's tiny heart throbbed.

But Iroha. I have become no longer the original Kaguya. I joke less too. Even if I wish for a reunion, I feel like the form is no longer the glamorous one I dreamed of on the moon.

……Even so, this song, the promise, the feelings, will take me to that place.

That man I met at the bar became my, the sea slug's, last friend. Not only did he firmly decode my halting speech, he frankly revealed that he was a CIA agent. I need a collaborator now. For the reunion with Iroha.

When I revealed my identity prepared to be laughed at, he replied with a peculiar smile, "I thought so."

Refining the plan, layering careful preparations, I begged him. "Steal the 'Original Shining Bamboo' stored in the Shosoin." He just nodded with a straight face as expected. He must have had his own work, so was it rare kindness, or simply being a dilettante?

"Won't you come with me?"

After everything was over, he said to me at the airport. Even though he could have taken the "Original Shining Bamboo" hostage and forcefully taken me back,

"I have a promise", leaving me who answered so, he flew to his home country alone.

"Excellent wine deepens with time. It's not all bad things."

Those words, and his way of laughing raising one corner of his mouth when glossing over things, remained in me forever.

──Now, preparations are complete. I, who built the prototype of the virtual space Tsukuyomi, dared to perform a solo live simultaneously with the launch. The song is, of course, that song I kept singing always. That song from that time we fought together with Iroha and the others, which changed form and was varied many times over eight thousand years.

The first live had incomparably fewer people than the Yachiyo live in my memories, but it was endlessly fun. I was unbearably happy to be able to sing for the first time in eight thousand years.

I held lives many times after that. I never got bored. Thinking that child might come today, the lives were always tingling with tension.

Every time, I searched for that child in the audience. That girl with the initial avatar might be her. At first, she might be logged in with her brother's account. She might be borrowing a friend's avatar. Could it be that cat?

Always, always, I found that child in the crowd and sang.

Doing that, finally that day comes.

──Iroha.

She'll probably cry. I thought so, but I sang smiling until the end.

……I see, so that's why Yachiyo was always smiling so happily.

※

"Iroha, Iroha"

A voice was heard from outside my head. It's my voice. My voice is calling that child's name.

"Iroha!"

Ah, wrong. This voice isn't me.

When I opened my eyelids, Yachiyo was in front of me.

"Yachiyo……"

"Idiot…… you'll break……"

There was Yachiyo's face looking like she was about to cry any moment.

Something like this happened before too. Kaguya, crying out of concern for me pushing myself. Even after eight thousand years, you did the same thing.

"……Kaguya"

I hugged Yachiyo.

I couldn't help hugging the two of them.

"Sorry, for not realizing for so long."

"Iroha"

"Even though you waited so long. Even though you searched for me so long."

"……Iroha"

"Sorry."

For eight thousand years, you wanted to cry the whole time, didn't you.

"Finally caught up."

My beloved Kaguya. My Kaguya. Taking a long, long time, you became Yachiyo, didn't you.

Sharing mind-numbing loneliness and despair, repeating countless meetings and the same number of partings, you learned that gentle smile, didn't you.

"The one who caught up, is me……"

Yachiyo whispered in my ear.

"Hey, Iroha. Iroha's face was very beautiful. I fell in love immediately."

She whispered with a voice like Kaguya.

"Strong, dignified, and a little sad, beautiful face. But, Iroha also became Iroha little by little, right. There were painful things, and each time you became stronger one by one, and became Iroha, right. It took me eight thousand years to know that."

"Yachiyo……"

I released Kaguya's body I was hugging. I wanted to see Yachiyo's face from the front.

"I've grown, you know? I was able to talk to Mom too, and even without Kaguya, it's plenty Happy End…… the story is, already over."

Kaguya was inside Yachiyo. There was Yachiyo containing Kaguya.

Looking at such a face,

"I want to be with Kaguya……"

For the first time in my life, I voiced a wish from the bottom of my heart.

For the first time in my life, I realized my true feelings.

"Iroha……"

Yachiyo was crying. Eight thousand years' worth of tears running down the cheeks of the strong, dignified, and slightly sad goddess.

"……Even though I thought it was okay to end with this."

"──Let's make this moment the best──party──"

Yachiyo sings.

"I always remembered."

"Precious melody is──flowing──to your──heart──"

I sing too.

"With this song, I could survive."

Yachiyo and I, raise our hands simultaneously.

Kaguya and Iroha's hand sign. The close friend thing.

As long as we have this, no matter how many thousands of years pass, we are together forever.

Yachiyo took my hand just like that. And says looking a little lonely.

"I always wonder if it would be warm if I touched."

……I always received warmth from Yachiyo.

"I want to eat pancakes with Iroha again."

But, Yachiyo has always been──

At that moment, something pierced through me.

And, I understood everything.

I get it, not yet. This story still has a continuation.

"I found something I want to do!"

Saying that, I stood up. I feel power as if all cells in my body awakened at once. What is this energy. Just standing like this is frustrating. I want to run out right now.

"Keep me company until the true Happy End!"

When I declared, Yachiyo looked up at my face dumbfounded.

Perhaps, I also had a face like this when I heard Kaguya's unreasonable demands.